Today’s blog is part two in the guest blog series by Rainforest Partnership.  Check out the first post here.  This entry was written by Niyanta Spelman, Executive Director of Rainforest Partnership.

Take a Breath, Thank a Rainforest

Every year on Earth Day, April 22nd, a seventh of us on this planet, a billion people, acknowledge the importance of the environment and celebrate our planet. Last year at Rainforest Partnership, we celebrated by taking a breath…and thanking a rainforest.

But why thank a rainforest? Through photosynthesis, rainforests play a vital role in processing atmospheric carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen. Every acre of rainforest absorbs approximately two and a half tons of carbon dioxide per year. Tropical rainforests, the “lungs” of the planet that absord ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide, covered over 12% of Earth’s land surface just a hundred years ago. Today, less than 5% remains. Some of us live and breathe to protect this 5% right alongside our partners who live in these forests. The rainforest may not be in our backyards, but we need to protect them as if they are. This is our pact at Rainforest Partnership.

Rainforest Partnership, a five year old international nonprofit organization, was formed with the idea that the way to protect the “lungs” of the planet is to help the people who live in those “lungs” make a living that allows them to protect their forests. People living in and around the forests need sustainable social and economic benefits from not overusing the forests. Therefore, using a bottom-up approach, we match economic development choices to the needs and desires, culture, knowledge, and skills of local communities, and the opportunities created by each individual rainforest. It all begins when a community turns to us asking us to help them identify an alternative to cutting down their trees, stemming from their desire to maintain their way of life and their forests.

For several decades, there had been a prevailing trend to create protected areas as a way of protecting tropical forests. Often, the people living in these forests were not included in this process, nor did anyone consult them. Sometimes they were removed from the very lands that had been their homes,

and their land was suddenly off limits to them as protected areas. Once the protected areas were created, often there were no future plans and funds to manage them, as if their designation alone was enough to ensure they would remain under protection forever. In reality, the protected areas were found to be in varying degrees of compromised condition.

If the people who lived in and around these forests had a stake in designating and protecting these forests, the “protected areas” might have a better chance of being so. That is what we learned from the experience of others, and what forms the core of our belief and working philosophy. That working with rainforest communities that want to protect their land and their way of life, and are looking for an alternative and sustainable means of livelihood, is the best way to protect the forest. If communities have a stake in protecting their forests, then they will do this for themselves and in doing so, do it for the rest of us.

Now take a breath, and thank a rainforest. And, thank the many

rainforest communities that protect their forests-with or without outside help- for all of us on this planet.

This entry reflects the author’s personal judgments and does not represent the views of the United States Government or the Department of State.